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Windows Defender Becomes First Antivirus To Run Inside a Sandbox (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Windows Defender is the first antivirus to gain the ability to run inside a sandbox environment, Microsoft said in an announcement. In software design, a "sandbox" is a security mechanism that works by separating a process inside a tightly controlled area of the operating system that gives that process access to limited disk and memory resources. The idea is to prevent bugs and exploit code from spreading from one process to another, or to the underlying OS.
"We're in the process of gradually enabling this capability for Windows insiders and continuously analyzing feedback to refine the implementation," Microsoft said in a celebratory blog post. Users who can't wait until Microsoft finishes testing the feature can also enable it right now. Support for Windows Defender running inside a sandbox environment has been silently added since Windows 10 version 1703. To enable it right now, Windows 10 users can follow these steps.
"We're in the process of gradually enabling this capability for Windows insiders and continuously analyzing feedback to refine the implementation," Microsoft said in a celebratory blog post. Users who can't wait until Microsoft finishes testing the feature can also enable it right now. Support for Windows Defender running inside a sandbox environment has been silently added since Windows 10 version 1703. To enable it right now, Windows 10 users can follow these steps.
The AV product has to open and test the file. This can be a way for malware to hijack the AV product itself. By running that test in a sandbox, the malware has another hurdle (escaping the sandbox) before it can do anything.
Todays viruses are lot like the ones of old.
Newer OS's tend to use the App Store concept for most of your trusted applications, that reduces viruses. However the realization that real damage doesn't need to be at the root/system level. But on the user level. Because you data is more important then the OS. Sure you may not be able to open up a low number IP Port, but your user account even on Linux systems, is often good enough to cause a lot of damage.
Linux and Mac systems are protected by the fact that they are not used enough by average joe, and most software you get from trusted locations.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You clearly don't understand how the sandbox concept works.
The part outside the sandbox, which does have SYSTEM privileges, no longer examines the contents of the file for malware. It passes it to the part inside the sandbox, which scans the content for malware. If the malware triggers an error in the scanning engine, it cannot be exploited because the scanning engine is in a sandbox and is running with reduced privileges, compared to previously when there was no sandbox and the scanning engine ran as SYSTEM as well.